U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Preston Deavers for Southern Ohio in Columbus scheduled a telephonic preliminary pretrial conference for Dec. 20 at 10 a.m. EST in a sex-discrimination complaint brought by a former T-Mobile sales executive against her ex-employer, said a notice Tuesday (docket 2:22-cv-03800). Former Director-Sales Heidi Cramer alleges she took the fall for the wrongful actions of her male co-workers in a scheme to artificially inflate the reported sales to small- and medium-business customers, and that she alone was terminated when the scheme was exposed (see 2210260038).

The Nov. 2 class action alleging that the website of online kitchenware store Food52.com is rife with barriers that make it inaccessible to people who are visually impaired or legally blind (see 2211100054) was assigned to U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams for the Southern District of New York, said her order Tuesday (docket 1:22-cv-09584). The parties within 30 days of service of the summons and complaint “must meet and confer for at least one hour in a good-faith attempt to settle this action,” said her order. If they fail to settle the case themselves, “they must also discuss whether further settlement discussions through the district’s court-annexed mediation program or before a magistrate judge would be productive at this time,” it said. She ordered the parties within 45 days to submit a joint letter requesting that the court either refer the case to mediation or a magistrate judge or schedule an initial status conference in the matter. Court records show the Food52.com class action alleging violations of the Americans With Disabilities Act was the 37th that plaintiff Ramon Fontanez filed through the same Manhattan law firm, Mizrahi Kroub, since mid-June, all in the Southern District of New York.

T-Mobile and its former Director-Sales Heidi Cramer agreed to extend by 21 days, to Dec. 19, the company’s deadline extension for answering Cramer’s sex discrimination complaint against the carrier, said a stipulation Monday (docket 2:22-cv-03800) in U.S. District Court for Southern Ohio in Columbus. Cramer alleges two top former T-Mobile sales executives engaged in a scheme of artificially inflating sales to small- and medium-business customers, and that she was terminated when the plan went awry (see 2210260038). T-Mobile assigned her “sole blame” for the wrongful actions of her male co-workers in the sales department, alleged her complaint.

T-Mobile removed to the U.S. District Court for Southern New York on Monday a petition (docket 1:22-cv-09710) from a group calling itself 100 Consumers to compel T-Mobile to submit to binding arbitration before the American Arbitration Association over the August 2021 data breach that affected 83 million T-Mobile customers. The petition was filed originally Oct. 7 in New York Supreme Court in Brooklyn. The petitioners “are all T-Mobile customers whose data was breached and stolen due to T-Mobile’s negligence,” said the petition. The petitioners are all consumers who agreed to T-Mobile’s terms and conditions, including the mandate that all disputes be resolved through arbitration, it said. The consumers filed the petition “due to T-Mobile’s refusal to move forward with arbitration and pay the arbitration fees despite their contractual requirement to do so” under the company’s own terms and conditions, it said. T-Mobile didn’t comment Tuesday.

AT&T wants a federal court to prevent Lumen from disconnecting circuits used to provide services to wireless and wireline customers, said a reply brief last week in support of a preliminary injunction filed in docket 1:22-cv-02206-RM-KLM in U.S. District Court in Colorado. The proceeding stems from a complaint filed by Lumen in August over unpaid time division multiplexing fees. “Lumen’s threatened disconnection would cause catastrophic harm to AT&T and its affected customers,” said AT&T’s motion. AT&T has argued that Lumen is seeking to raise the fees by 20%, while Lumen has argued that AT&T was previously seeing a discounted rate, and that the increased prices are consistent with the market price. “Even if AT&T pays the amounts Lumen demands now, Lumen will threaten disconnection again unless AT&T keeps paying Lumen at the rates it demands while this case proceeds,” AT&T said. “AT&T would be irreparably harmed by this massive out-of-pocket cost.” Along with the injunction, AT&T is also seeking to have the case transferred to the Southern District of New York, and the motion says the court should rule on the transfer motion first, because Lumen has agreed not to disconnect any circuits until the Colorado court or a court in the Southern District of New York have ruled on the preliminary injunction. Lumen previously planned to disconnect the circuits Dec. 5, the transfer motion said. Lumen opposes the transfer motion, and has argued that its agreements with AT&T mean the case doesn’t have to be transferred.

The U.S. District Court for Arizona intends to clarify its Oct. 7 order denying Arizona GOP Chair Kelli Ward’s request for an injunction to bar enforcement of the House Jan. 6 Committee’s subpoena for Ward’s phone records, said T-Mobile in its request Monday (docket 22-16473) for limited remand at the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. Remand to U.S. District Judge Diane Humetewa in Phoenix and her clarification are necessary to confirm that the scope of the committee’s subpoena on T-Mobile “has not been narrowed to exclude records” involving the phone numbers associated with Ward’s medical patients, said the request. Remand and clarification will “ensure that the district court record correctly reflects the active scope” of the subpoena, it said. Monday’s Supreme Court denial of Ward’s application to block enforcement of the subpoena (see 2211140039) was her fourth such setback since Sept. 22, following two denials by Humetewa and one by the 9th Circuit. Ward argued unsuccessfully each time to quash the subpoena on constitutional grounds and to protect doctor-patient privilege. The committee says its investigators need access to Ward's phone records to probe her efforts to disrupt certification of the 2020 election.

AT&T and T-Mobile want the U.S. District Court for Eastern Texas in Sherman to issue a protective order to prevent disclosure of their confidential information during discovery of AT&T’s Sept. 6 false advertising complaint over T-Mobile’s BannedSeniors.com campaign, said the carriers in a joint motion Friday (docket 4:22-cv-00760). There's good cause for a protective order, said their motion. AT&T and T-Mobile expect during discovery to exchange confidential information that, if disclosed outside the safeguards of a protective order, “would create a substantial risk of serious harm to the competitive position of the parties,” it said. Protection of confidential information is necessary “because discovery in this action will require disclosure of documents that are relevant to the claims and defenses asserted,” said the text of the proposed order. “It is likely that such documents will contain confidential personal information, financial information, and/or proprietary or trade secret information.” AT&T alleges in its complaint that each of the claims in the BannedSeniors.com campaign is "literally false" when T-Mobile asserts that 92% of U.S. seniors can't get an AT&T discount because they live outside Florida. T-Mobile moved Sept. 16 to dismiss the case for lack of personal jurisdiction on grounds that AT&T's claims do not belong in a Texas court.

An Oct. 24 decision from U.S. District Judge William Bryson for Delaware held that certain claims under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) germane to the controversial practice of web scraping “were sufficient to survive" the defendants' motion to dismiss, Jeffrey Neuburger, co-head of Proskauer’s Technology, Media & Telecommunications Group, said in an analysis Thursday. Bryson's opinion (docket 1:20-cv-01191) “potentially breathes life into the use of the CFAA to combat unwanted scraping,” said Neuburger. Low-cost European airline Ryanair sued five travel booking companies in September 2020, alleging they engaged in web scraping to collect data from myRyanair, the restricted-access section of the airline’s website, then used that data to enable users to book Ryanair flights on their own websites, often at higher fares than Ryanair was offering. Ryanair also alleged that the web-scraping defendants circumvented the technology that Ryanair installed to prevent unauthorized users from accessing myRyanair. The Delaware court allowed the unauthorized access claims to go forward, on grounds that Ryanair had raised a "plausible" argument when it asserted that the myRyanair portion of its website was nonpublic, "thus making the defendants’ continued access to those pages unauthorized for purposes of the CFAA,” said Neuburger. The ruling suggests that a “cognizable vicarious liability” claim under the CFAA is “certainly possible in certain circumstances,” he said. Those scenarios include where the commissioning party has the requisite knowledge and control over the scraper’s actions or if a party induces another to commit violations of the CFAA, he said. Bryson's ruling also is noteworthy because it suggests that a CFAA intent to defraud claim might be pleaded, “based on actions taken by data scrapers to avoid anti-scraping technologies,” he said. “It remains to be seen how future courts would characterize specific anti-detection measures under the CFAA.”

Judges in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals “are getting tougher on lawyers who represent serial plaintiffs by reducing their fees and threatening sanctions,” said Seyfarth Shaw in an analysis Thursday. In an Oct. 24 opinion in Shayler v. 1310 PCH , the 9th Circuit panel affirmed the district court’s order awarding a reduced attorney’s fees and costs following the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the plaintiff on a claim under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The plaintiff, a serial ADA litigant, moved for an award of more than $34,000 in attorney’s fees and costs, said the opinion. But the district court “reduced this award significantly,” citing factors “such as the routine nature of the work performed by the plaintiff’s attorneys,” it said. This decision “should be useful for businesses fighting fee petitions filed by serial plaintiffs in routine cases,” said Seyfarth Shaw.

U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom for Southern Florida granted a motion by plaintiff Maria Fernanda Soto Leigue to extend the briefing deadlines in her Florida Telephone Solicitation Act class action against Keiser University, said a paperless order she entered Thursday (docket 1:22-cv-22307). Monday was the deadline for the parties to exchange expert witness reports on issues of class certification, and rebuttal expert witness reports were due Nov. 28 (see 2211040056). Bloom's order extends those deadlines to Dec. 29 and Jan. 19, respectively. The complaint alleges that Keiser's high student turnover rate, one of the highest for any private university in the U.S., provoked the school to engage in aggressive telemarketing practices that ran afoul of the FTSA. Keiser had opposed the deadline extensions on grounds that the plaintiff “has not demonstrated diligence to support a finding of good cause to modify the scheduling order,” said the school in an opposition filing Wednesday. She bases her motion for deadline extensions on her assertions that she has been diligently attempting to locate the entity that transmitted the text messages on Keiser’s behalf, but she has not subpoenaed the entity for the text records, even though she has known the entity’s identity for months, said the school. “Apparently seeking to win this case through gamesmanship and not on the merits,” Keiser opposes a “simple request to modify” the schedule to allow additional time to obtain documents needed by her expert to prepare his report, said the plaintiff’s reply, also filed Wednesday. Efforts to locate the text messaging vendor, TextLane, that the plaintiff seeks to subpoena “have been unsuccessful,” the reply said.